Paranoia
by paranoid-truth666
Summary: inspired by the Silent Hill


Paranoia  
  
I rolled over to glance at the clock; it was a quarter past two. Since the incident, I haven't been able to sleep much. Every time I close my eyes, the horrible images flash by. The sheer terror of it all has crippled me. I can't sleep, I can't eat, I can hardly get out of bed in the morning.  
  
Every time I glance at the clock, my gaze is drawn to the closet. On the top shelf I keep a gun. If I was to go over there and end it all, the images, the memories, the constant plaguing fear, I might be able to rest. Then the same question comes into my head. What if that doesn't end it all, what if the fear doesn't go away, what if that's all I feel, nothing but constant fear. What if...  
  
Even now I can't come to terms that it really happened. That it's not all a horrible nightmare. That I didn't just wake up in a cold sweat and dwell on it for fifteen minutes and then shake it off. The nightmare has become real; it's a terror which cannot be silenced.  
  
Four in the morning, the only people awake are drug addicts and insomniacs. I get out of bed and glace out the window. The street looks so empty, so barren, so dead. The cool, pre-morning fog has cast an air of uncertainty over the whole suburb. The low, rolling clouds send odd shadows over the yards, demonic shapes that seem to mock me. The paranoia has become a constant dampener on my spirits. You can never really understand how hard it is to have a good time when you think everything is out to get you. I return my glance to the window, hoping that the solemn night air will bring me some answers to the questions that plague me.  
  
I see a child ride down the street on his tricycle. At four in the morning, I second this fact. The child can't be any older then 5 or 6, maybe younger. He looks vaguely familiar, like I've seen him before, but I don't know him. Perhaps he was a face from television. I lean up against the glass; it's cool to the touch. The child looks up at me, waves, and then continues on his way. This is shocking; he couldn't have known I was here. It's too dark for him to see me, I only saw him because of the street lamps. There was something in his eyes that terrified me. They were so cold, dark pits of despair, gazing up at me. The sickly smile on his face was like that of a boy about to die, one who knows his fate and wants to aid those around him by making it easier for them to cope with his passing. It'll be okay ma, I feel a bit better today. I can almost hear it. The mother tires to hold back tears and his father leaves the room, overcome with emotion.  
  
His skin was chalk white, like that of a corpse, long dead. This fits the smile, but not the eyes. The eyes are the worst. They could suck the warmth out of a boiler. Solid black orb, filing the cavity of his sockets, swelling them; they put the fear of God into me. His arms were thin, like those Ethiopian children you see on the World Vision commercials.  
  
I had to choke back the revulsion. The way his arm shook as he waved was repulsive, yet at the same time, it made me incredibly sad. Almost as if he knew his fate, that he would soon be dead, and I would be left to mourn his death. Then I hear it. The voice of the child in the street. Not in my head, but in the room, the whole house. It booms down the halls, but it never loses its child like quality.  
  
It's not over, oh no. It will never be over for you. Even in death it will continue. You are forever lost.  
  
The last part his repeated, You are forever lost, again and again and as I collapse on the floor, it finally stops. I look out the window to where the boy was, he was in far worse shape than he was before. His body in convulsing in the street. Why am I here? It should bring me back to the brink of insanity, but after what I had been through, it only horrifies me. It pains me deep inside that I haven't gone completely mad at this sight. Someone deep inside my psyche told me it should have sent me clear around the bend, yelled at me that I should be down on the ground in tears, unable to recover. It's only something that Satan could do to a person. The look on the boy's face is one of incomprehension, one of terror in its purest form. He is in inconceivable pain, and anguish, but as his body withers away before me, his eyes never change. They remained those back orbs. They seem to suck in all light around them. They give the poor boy's face a sunken look. I can't stand to watch the display of pure evil before me; it is enough to shake the very belief on any God from you. I have to force my self to turn away, a strange compulsion has come over my mind, telling, yelling at me to turn back and watch, watch until it was over. I'm too weak; I am forced to turn back, to finish watching the gruesome spectacle. His body was swiftly turning charcoal grey with decay. His weak corpse lies in the street. Later I will realize how I know the boy. He had been reported missing on the evening news, his parents were pleading for anyone with information to come forward. A wave of grief swept over me; tomorrow one of my neighbours would find the boy where he is now, a shadow of his former self, lying in the street, ravaged and beaten. I have to stop thinking like this. It made me physically ill reminiscing about what the poor boy had gone through. His life cut short to send me a message.  
  
His half decomposed body was lying motionless in the street; I was unable to look away. The boy's corpse then twitched, it was a startling motion, hulling me back to reality from glazed memories.  
  
The red-grey corpse was heaved to its feet, not in a type of motion that would be expected from a human, but more like that of a puppet. Then was jerked to his feet, those black eyes glaring up at me, but he wasn't on the ground, he was above it, being held there by some satanic force which was bent on my ultimate destruction. He then raised one arm at me, locked at the elbow, but his had was loose at the wrist and just hung there, one bony finger pointing at me. I heard the voice in the house again, similar to before, but the pleasant child-like quality had been replaced by that of a demon, one which I was very familiar, the same one which took my best friend, and so many others. It said, You are forever lost.  
  
I awoke the next morning at the kitchen table, a bottle of gin lying beside me. With a splitting headache, I glanced out the window. The flashing red and blue lights told me the police had found the boy's body. A cold chill took hold of me. Not the quick shiver you get when you're scared, but a steady, constant cold that goes down to the bone. I pick up the bottle and move toward the garbage. Glancing down to see if there was any left, dismayed that the bottle is empty I slowly start to go over last night's proceedings.  
  
The demon's voice rang through my head. You are forever lost. Again and again, growing louder, slowly taking hold of my mind. I fear that I might go insane if I can't remember all of what happened three weeks ago, the night this all started. I tried to go back in my mind and find the answers, but all I see is that boy, with those black orbs, staring back at me, the spherical darkness that bound the surrounding light in a evil veil. Shuddering, I turn around and move towards the window. I can't get the image of the boy out of my mind. The way he was hulled to his feet and the way he raised that frail arm, his hand limp at the end of a rigid pole. The way he weakly pointed at me...  
  
There is yellow police tape every where, the crime investigators are staring down at the poor boy's carcass. After what happened to him, I'm not sure if it's really right to call it a body. His face is contorted in a final expression of total agony. His eyes are as they should be, large, blue, and filled with fear, not the black orbs which were there before. They look incredibly livid in his head, almost as if they weren't there when he died, but as if they had been replaced after the fact.  
  
The medical examiner takes one look at the boy, shudders, and covers him with a clean white sheet. I can tell by the look on his face, he knows something terrible has happened here. It looks as if it has never happened. A strange voice starts to laugh in my head.  
  
I know what the voice is. It's a personification of my madness, of my lunacy. The voice is coming more and more as of late. Everyone has one. A little voice that tells them to do stupid things, "Hey! I have a good idea! Let's turn the car into oncoming traffic!" We come to ignore this voice. We come to cope with it, to slowly block it out, and then one day, you don't hear it at all. It crawls back into the dark hole it came from. Then again, there is always that one case, when the mind switches places with dark hole. It never happens all at once. It could take years, months, or in my case, three weeks. After this happens, the voice starts to get a bigger say in what you do. It starts to control things. Then, one day, you snap. The voice takes total control. It starts to decide what happens, where you go, what you do...  
After this happens, there really isn't that much you can do to stop it.  
  
I struggle to remember anything about the boy. His parents were on the news a week ago, begging for anyone with information to come forward. I remember at the time thinking what a horrible cliché that phrase was, made popular by such culturally important shows as America's Most Wanted and Unsolved Mysteries. Apparently, the boy, Patrick, was playing outside on his tricycle when a man in a dark coat came by and grabbed him and the tricycle. When the mother realized what was going on, the boy was already gone. The whole incident seemed clichéd.  
  
Three weeks ago... it seems like a life time. Three short weeks, any other time of the year, that would have gone by in a flash, hell, any other time of my life it would have gone by in a flash. Those three weeks went by like a prison sentence, never really ending. Sure you got out, but it was never the same. Your friends didn't really talk to you the same. You can't really fall back into old patterns. Your favourite TV shows aren't on at the same time as they used to be, and your food isn't really prepared the same way. It just won't be the same ever again. That's exactly what it's like. My friends have stopped talking to me; they all say I've gone mad. Personally, if the shoe was on the other foot, I would have said the same thing. Imagine, one day, your friend is talking about how the Boston Bruins never really perform the same in the playoffs as they do in the regular season, and the next he's talking about a demon who can possess others and is attempting to kill him.  
  
Maybe if I work backwards, I can find some sanity in all this madness, maybe I can fend off the voice, send it back to the dark hole, and make me intact...sane...normal... 


End file.
